Terry Simpson's Story.
got involved in Re-evaluation Counselling (RC) soon after the last time I was on a psychiatric ward in 1985. Life seemed bleak at the time. I was 34 and my GP said I'd be ill for the rest of my life if I didn't take Haloperidol, which was making me feel lousy. Compliance was not an option. But what, then?
I'd already met John Mullen through my involvement in supporting the miners’ strike of 1984/85. He fascinated me because apart from being really smart and passionately political, he wasn't afraid to be tender. Also he liked to sing and have fun, had a wicked sense of humour, yet he didn't drink or smoke. Whatever he was on, it seemed to be working, so when he told me about a support group in Leeds for 'mental health system survivors', I thought I'd give it a go.
Listening to other peoples' stories and waiting my turn was at first a strange experience. It seemed unnatural not to chip in, and not to be interrupted in turn, but it was rewarding enough to keep going. Once a month I would spend the evening with this little group of four, sometimes five or six people, and little by little I began to feel better about myself. A group of us went away and spent a week-end just listening to each other, thinking about the mental health system, and how it could be different. I think it was so powerful because in the 10 years since I'd first been in hospital I'd never met anyone who could bear to hear much about my experiences in the system. People would get upset, or angry, or play it down, or tell me to forget it. But here, once a month, was a clear open space, where people whose intimate secrets I'd shared were prepared to listen to me with enthusiasm and encouragement.
I began to get involved in campaigning, and found I had a talent for it. I didn't get rattled easily. I was angry, but having raged at the injustice of it all in the group, I didn't have to lose it in a meeting, even when people were being provocative. I could use my anger to argue for the changes I thought were necessary. I got a paid job as an advocate and spent four years going back into the same wards where I'd been mistreated, (on one occasion challenging my old consultant!). It was hard, stressful work, like going into the dragon's cave every morning. Sometimes I got singed, but by now I had a network of people I could meet regularly, and who I knew thought well about me, and I never went near a psychiatric unit as a patient again.
For years I counselled just with other survivors, but gradually I found that there is a lot more to it. I went to a weekend for men, and it struck a deep chord with me. I realised how isolated most males are brought up to be, and how universal the mistreatment of boys is - how we are humiliated or even beaten up for daring to show our feelings. I'd thought it was just me. Reclaiming an emotional life has been a slow process that's far from over for me, but every so often I've had the kind of deeply moving session that is so powerful it changes your life.
When my son was nine I lost him for several hours at a music festival. The next day I was going out with a friend, but I still felt awful. She knew Re-evaluation Counselling, and I asked her if I could spend some time telling her about what had happened and why I felt so bad about it. As I started to talk I was overwhelmed by tears, and cried solidly for about 10 minutes. Afterwards I felt great - really clear-headed and bright. I think that was the point where I got convinced about RC!
Even so, when my father died some years later, I drank quite a lot over the next few weeks. I also grieved some, but alcohol was so much the accepted thing in my family and among my friends, that it was easier to numb out with it, rather than face the enormity of what had happened. One day I'd arranged to meet up with Una, one of my trusted support group, for a brief session at the advocacy project in Leeds. I felt bad, and talked about my dad, but somehow couldn't get in touch with how I really felt. I mentioned he used to sing 'Danny Boy' to us and Una invited me to sing it. I tried, and it set me off crying deeply, which was a great relief, and I began to come to terms with the loss from then on.
Laughter is a great healer too. Recently in a support group for parents we were invited to use our session time to play. I found it really hard. The only games I could remember from being little were war games. 'OK', I said to the group, 'we're escaping from the enemy, disguised as farmers'. 'Yeah' said my counsellor, 'French farmers', and for some reason I found this remark hilarious, and began to roar with laughter. It turned into one of those belly laughs that hurts and just kept on going and going. Two teenagers came pounding down from the top of the house to see what the noise was, and still I couldn't stop. I laughed solidly and loudly for about ten minutes, and I felt great afterwards. The only explanation I can think of is that as a boy growing up in the 50's I absorbed huge amounts of terror from war films and adults deeply affected by the recently ended war, and that I'd carried this fear with me all my life until I finally found somewhere I felt safe enough to discharge it in laughter.
Mostly sessions are far less dramatic than that, but always they help me figure out how to make what I'm doing in my life go better. Having two or three regular spaces in my week to talk things through with people I trust is what keeps me on course. I love the idea that we're all basically good, that reality is benign, and that anything which seems to contradict this is because of hurts that people have picked up, which can be discharged. This resonates with the vision that came to me during the times when I was supposed 'psychotic'.
Above all I love the way RC is about changing the world, not just settling for being comfortable as an individual. Essentially there is nothing in the theory of it that I didn't already believe before. RC is just a practical means to get to the liberation I've always known is possible for all of us.
This is something I wrote in a poem dedicated to my son when he was small, before I knew about RC, but it seems to me to sum up a lot of what its all about :
'I wish for you a world of simplicity and compassion.
tenderness that's always new,
and that there is no limit to what you are.'
Return to Personal Stories
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
